It’s hard to keep up with all the new features we’re throwing around on Pijoo, but people keep having great ideas and we just can’t help ourselves.  Technically only a minor change, but this could have a big impact on the way you use the site, so it’s worth a mention.

Member kerendg, wrote a post about Pijoo, and suggested adding a comment rating system, which we thought was a pretty cool way to go, so it went in. You can now click the + and - next to the comments on any blog post in the voting system, and rate each comment up or down.

Enjoy it, and as always with new features - bug reports to the usual address.

Early in the beta phase of Pijoo, we had an experimental feature called Groups. This feature allowed users to create communities based on a common interest and manage a group of friends with like-minded interests.

Back then, our userbase was too small to benefit from the feature, so we dropped it in later versions of Pijoo, and very quickly had lots of complaints from members who wanted groups to stay. We’re now ready to re-introduce groups into Pijoo, which will allow you to build communities around anything you like, making it much easier to get your message out to a wider audience.

Over the coming weeks, some of you will be randomly selected to try out the groups beta, play around and really get a deeper involvement in the community. Keep a look out for the Groups tab - if you see it, you’ve been chosen to test this feature before we roll it out to everyone.

In a nutshell, groups will allow you to connect with users who share your interests, chat and share ideas based on the group topic, as well as create and manage your own groups based on any topic you like.

**Updated : Removed mention of sponsor accounts, as we only restrict site features that would impact on bandwidth etc.. in the long-term. We’re not yet decided how groups are going to work but they’ll definitely be available for everyone.

We’re pretty excited a Pijoo this week, with work beginning on our new offices. The city center studio/office space will allow us to streamline our operations, and will create a relaxed working environment for the development of Pijoo.Com.

We’ve got a little work to do, moving thigs in and getting everything set up. (Coffee machines, pool table, oh and desks/computers of course…), but we should be in and settled within two weeks. To kick off our new ‘Photo Blog’, pijoo.com co-founder Calvin will be snapping away with his camera to show you how its going. More news on our new Photo Blog soon.

Comments on blog posts (in the voting system) now have BBCode support for text formatting, images, links and Youtube videos! Just click BBCode Help above the comment box for a full list of tags you can use in your comments…

Have fun!

We listen to every user on pijoo.com, and take a keen interest in your thoughts and ideas about our service. Recently, a user made a very good point in a blog post about our voting system, and we’d like to address it…

Tea512, writes…

The problem I am having is when a blog post is read then the reader can decide if it was worth their time. You can click on a button called “I Love It” or “I Hate It”. The scores are kept to the left of the post, and the more positive votes for the post the higher in the most popular you will be listed. For some reason there seems to be a maliciousness tone to bloggers grading other bloggers. You would not think this would happen as everyone is in the same game. There is a problem with the system when a person can read the story, then click they hate it based on content, author, language, and grammar, but they do not have to give a reason or leave a name behind of whom they are.

This is a great point, and one I wanted to repond to on the Tea512 blog itself, but since comments are closed I thought it would be a good idea to start a dialogue with the whole community on the Pijoo Blog.

While there’s no malicious intent in voting a post down, the phrase ‘I hate it!’ on the button is probably a little strong, since most people would vote a post down if they disagree with the content, don’t find it interesting etc.. and because of this we’ll be changing ‘I hate it!’ to something friendlier like.. ‘Not for me’ or something similar.

The voting system itself is very similar to other social bookmarking sites, where users can ‘bury’ or vote down an article anonymously, and we think the anonymity should stay, as it allows users to be honest and vote based on their personal tastes, but we’ll be looking at ways to encourage users to leave a comment after voting.

So, any thoughts and ideas on how we can improve the voting system are more than welcome, either by commenting on this post, or if you prefer, a quick email or blog post.

We hare happy to announce the launch of the very first Pijoo Blog Awards.

Over the next couple of months Pijoo staff members will be inspecting each and every blog in the Pijoo Network, and selecting the best for a shiny new Pijoo Award. There are four  grades of award available, from the ‘One Star Award’, through to the “Four Star Award”.

Winners of an award will be e-mailed personally by a Pijoo staff member, with their award badge. If our lovely green badge doesn’t fit with your blog theme, we’ll even change the colour for you.

Blogs judged to be worthy of our highest 4 star award, will be well written, entertaining/informative, they will be updated regularly…basically the creme de la creme of Blogs.

Three, Two and One star blogs will still be top notch… Our staff will be searching blogs by hand, so anything that that entertains, and manages to keep our attention, will be awarded.

To be eligible for a Pijoo Blog Award you must be a member of the Pijoo Network. Join Pijoo.Com for free now, to qualify. And of course, as part of the Pijoo Network you will be able to interact with other bloggers, promote your own blogs and generate more traffic. It’s win-win!

If you haven’t heard of IzeaFest, it’s a 3-day blogging event held by our friends at Izea, who brought you blogging sites like SocialSpark, and Bloggers Choice Awards - so they’re clearly as passionate about blogging as we are, and it looks like it’s going to be a scorcher of an event this year, with keynote speakers like Jeremy Schoemaker (shoemoney) and Merlin Mann (43folders).

Held at the Orlando Grand Bohemian Hotel, from September 11th-13th, Izeafest is the perfect opportunity to connect with fellow bloggers, including some well known names and passionate blogging gurus from around the world including John Chow (johnchow.com) and Steve Spalding (how to split an atom).

Pijoo joins a handful of blog related partners in our support for this event, which we hope you will enjoy, and help spread the word. Check out the schedule, and register for your place now - it’s going to be a good one!

**Update - Use the discount code “Pijoo” for $15 off the ticket price, or click the link above when you register.

The early launches of Pijoo way back in 2007 included a toolbar for firefox, which we had to drop when Firefox 3 was launched due to some compatibility issues (ok it just stopped working altogether) so we’ve been frantically trying to remake the toolbar ever since.

Well, we’re pleased to announce that the Pijoo Toolbar is now back.. and since we used 3rd-party tools to build it, it’s about 9000% better than our own poxy efforts.

The new toolbar is a lot sexier than before, and it works on both Firefox 3, and Internet Explorer - bringing your Pijoo community to your browser. You can even click the Pijoo logo on the left to stumble *ahem* discover random blogs from the Pijoo network.

You can grab it from the widgets page and start exploring the marvelous world of.. erm.. Pijoo, and because it rests in your browser, it’s great for lazy people who can’t be bothered to search for blogs the traditional way. Grab it!

The Pijoo minions are currently working on the all new, Pijoo Blog Awards.

We will be trawling through our members to find the very best blogs, in a range of categories. Only Pijoo.Com members will be eligable for an award, so if you’re not a member yet, join now!

There will be eight main categories, as well as another 15 ‘mini awards’ to recognize those great Bloggers who didn’t quite make it to the top of one of our main categories. The competition will be launched at some point in August (keep checking back and we’ll keep you posted as it draws nearer), and the categories will include:

Best Sports Blog, Best News Blog, Best Technology Blog, Best Male Blogger, Best Female Blogger, Best Comedy Blog, Best Media Blog…. and, The Pijoo Ultimate Blog Award For Outstanding Blogging

Sign up for our newsletter when you join Pijoo.com for all of the latest news and updates on the Pijoo Blog Awards!

A couple of eagle-eyed users have asked.. “oi! What’s these creepy codes in my widget/invite/etc.. links?” - for the rest of you, this refers to the “&ref=????” or.. “&AffID=????” at the end of links that appear in your widgets and invite messages.

It’s no conspiracy, these codes are part of a new tracking system that allows us to see who’s bringing new members in, because we hope to reward you for doing so. We’re keeping the details hush-hush for now, but sometime in the near future, all these referrals will bring huge rewards for users who actively spread the word about Pijoo.

It may be money, it may be other prizes.. but it’ll definitely work towards a free upgrade to sponsor accounts, among other benefits, so in the mean-time - just keep doing whatever you’re doing - referrals are already being tracked for when we launch the scheme.

The idea came about when some users said.. “Hey! We should get credit towards sponsor accounts for our referrals!!” .. so we did what any self-respecting web service should do - we said..”yeah, ok”, and started looking at ways to reward our top referrers.

The reward scheme will be launched in the coming weeks, but we will invite a handful of users into the private beta, where they can cash-out, upgrade for free, or whatever goodies we decide to put in.

You can start earning credit for referrals straight away, by inviting friends, using one of our widgets, or if you prefer to mention Pijoo in a blog post, copy & paste the link from the ‘Invite Friends’ page and use that - as it has your unique code already in it.